The invention relates to the processing of data before they are transferred via the transfer medium to the receiving equipment and then displayed on the display device of the receiving equipment.
The number of exchanges is increasing in the operator network, and the exchanges are growing larger. They continually produce a significant amount of various data that have to be processed flexibly and reliably. The operator can use MML (Man Machine Language) commands to modify the desired records, such as the CDR (Call Detail Record) accounting records, for a single subscriber from the block that was stored on the operation and maintenance centre hard disk, and to print them on the screen or paper.
An accounting record is created for every call in the network centre LE (Local Exchange, the subscriber""s local exchange) that performs the call-specific accounting. The structure of the accounting record is determined using an operation control command before the call-specific accounting is applied. The created accounting records are sent to the Billing Centre for further processing. The number and size of records have been growing, and the processing and administration require a reliable mechanism to successfully process the different kinds of accounting records. Records are sent to the billing system in large data blocks that may consist of millions of records. The data contained in the records may be in different formats since the raw data stream that was used to format the records during the message creation may contain data in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), binary and hexadecimal formats.
The problem with this traditional arrangement is that it is difficult and expensive to change the format. When fields are added to or deleted from a record, there is a risk that the receiving end may not be able to interpret the modified record data stream correctly after the changes. Furthermore, the data stream of a message that is in a different format and contains a number of empty fields increases the amount of data that are transferred from the exchange. It is, therefore, normal to try to avoid making any changes, and all data are sent for further processing irrespective of whether it is necessary or not. Thus, the data stream can be larger than necessary.
The problems described above were solved in the previous patent application FI-971621 by the applicant. According to the patent application, special mother and user forms were employed to enable reliable instant dynamic format changes. The mother form contains the complete structure of the message. For every message, there is a mother form, with all field labels and parameters of the message, that is received as a raw data stream. The operator can view the mother form as plain (ASCII format) text with a graphical interface. The user selects the desired fields from the mother form with a mouse and drops the selected fields into the user form; in other words, the user formats the form to contain only the data that the user wants separate from the data stream. The formatting process separates the records, according to the fields specified in the form, from the raw data stream for sending to the Billing Centre. The Billing Centre uses the user form to interpret the received data stream. There is a large amount of forms available, one for each message type. The use of a form is based on the fact that the position of each field within the message is unambiguously determined by field positions and lengths. Thus, the user form contains references to the field positions and lengths that are to be sent to the Billing Centre. Field labels are not transferred from the exchange to the Billing Centre; they are only in the user form. Only the field content is transferred.
In addition to billing messages, a telephone exchange will produce a great number of messages for special purposes. These messages contain only binary data. Before such messages are sent to a remote destination such as a Network Management System (NMS), they will normally have to be converted into a human-readable format. Therefore, the exchange will normally convert them into ASCII files. The file can then be displayed on the screen in the desired format. The file will now contain headers, space characters and empty lines. In this document, the abbreviation NMS will be used for Network Management System and MML for the MML program.
The simple chart in FIG. 1 shows the prior art system. The telephone exchange contains the MML programs, 111, that are used to control the data collection processes, 112, in the exchange. The operator can print the desired recordsxe2x80x94such as accounting recordsxe2x80x94onto the screen, and these will be displayed as plain text on the screen. Having received an MML command, the MML program will request the data acquisition process for the data that correspond with the command, e.g. data on subscriber A. The data acquisition process looks for the data on subscriber A in the database, 113, and sends them to the MML that, in turn, forwards them to the NMS.
ASCII format increases the data streams and wastes the transfer bandwidth since it contains a number of empty or untagged fields. Outputting will contain the actual positioning data or form, which means that similar outputs will transfer the same headers as well as a great number of unnecessary space characters multiple times. When thousands of outputs are being sent, vast amounts of repeated data will be transferred multiple times resulting in an unnecessary load in the transfer medium. Data transfer in ASCII format is also cumbersome and unreliable, and the recipient has no way of determining the type (byte, word, doubleword) of received data. Nor has the recipient any information on the maximum values of the received data elements.
The use of forms, as described earlier, significantly facilitates making changes to the format but still does not solve the problem of transferring unnecessary data between the telephone exchange and the NMS. Most of such data are transferred as ASCII. The data stream contains a significant amount of unnecessary data since both the field headers and the values are transferred.
If it is necessary for the network management to analyse the received text, data control will have to perform searches for a word and a value preceded by a word, which will cause problems if there are multiple instances of the word. In the currently used output format, problems also arise if a word contains a typing error, e.g. if the network management program uses a word with a spelling error as a search key, and the error is corrected at a later processing stage, the word can no longer be found after the correction.
The purpose of the invention is to offer a method that will remedy the inconveniences described above. The objective is a method in which the data stream is minimised by sending only the data that are crucial for outputting without any unnecessary characters (such as space characters) or, in messages that are related to the same topic, repeated data, such as field labels or padding.
The set objectives can be achieved by the method and system that are described in the dependent claims.
This invention is related to the processing of data that are produced by a telephone exchange, transferring the processed data through a transfer medium to the receiving equipment, and outputting the processed data in the outputting device of the receiving equipment.
The purpose is to produce a solution in which the amount of data transferred through the transfer medium between the telephone exchange and the receiving equipment is decreased by processing, and the data can be interpreted more accurately and reliably than with the current implementations.
This can be accomplished by using fixed forms that are permanently stored in the databases of the telephone exchange and the receiving equipment while making the forms easy to change/update. The exchange will have equipment to separate and forward the desired binary data. The binary stream transferred from the telephone exchange to the receiving equipment through the transfer media will, therefore, only contain the content of the fields requested by the receiving equipment. It will not contain any unnecessary data, such as fields, headers, space characters or the like, that would increase the data stream size. The form will be used to determine the data and the view that is displayed in the display device. By using the form, the receiving equipment can separate the received binary data into sections that were specified in the form and attach every section to the field that is indicated by the respective identifier information.
The method according to the invention either HTML (HyperText Markup Language) forms or XML (Extensible Markup Language) forms are used. HTML form is used in the telephone exchange to form a data stream and the values associated with the data will be transferred from the telephone exchange to at least one receiving equipment in binary format, which received data stream is used in the receiving equipment to form outputs and reports. HTML forms will be used in both directions to process the data, to send the data and to interpret the received data. Forms can be sent from the exchange to the receiving equipment and from the receiving equipment to the exchange. In the receiving equipment the HTML form is used to form a data stream that controls the operation of the exchange.
In one embodiment of the invention, the telephone exchange uses ASCII forms as well as HTML forms to process the data before transferring the data via the transfer medium to the receiving equipment.
An advantageous extra feature of the invention is the setting up of a special monitoring point in, e.g. data control to monitor the binary stream, and to process the received data further only if a certain predetermined condition is met. With the monitoring point, it is possible to, for example, monitor the exchange load or excessively long phone calls, which in turn makes it easier to immediately take the corrective measures as necessary.